Apologies in Chinese Restaurants' Responses to Negative Online Reviews and Rapport Management-A Cross-cultural Perspective

Abstract

The present study, drawing upon Spencer-Oatey’s (2008) Rapport Management framework, presents an analysis of restaurants’ apologies to customers in Chinese CMC. 100 responses by restaurants to customers’ negative reviews on Dianping.com(a Chinese independent third-partyreviewing website similar to TripAdvisor) have been collected for our study, and the method of RhetoricalMove Analysis has been used to identify Apologies and accompanying moves in our data. It is revealedthat apologies, along with other accompanying moves such as Thanks, Explanations, Repairs, Openings,Closings, Invitations etc., serve as remedial responses to restore rapport or harmony. Considering thepublic nature of the open online communication, the linguistic domain of apology (including apologyexpressions, intensification, repetition, honorifics, endearing addressing terms, pronouns, and selfreferringexpressions) and content of apology (Accepting or not accepting responsibility) are properlydesigned and managed by the restaurants’ response writers in order to repair the relationship with theunsatisfied individual customer on the one hand, while maintaining and protecting the restaurants’good reputation with the overhearing audience online on the other hand. We also compared our Chineseonline apologies with those in English and Japanese as studied by Morrow & Yamanouchi (2020) in orderto reveal some cross-cultural similarities and differences. The findings are expected to provide someinsights into the area of cross-cultural studies of online apologies, as well as to be valuable to businessprofessionals who increasingly interact with consumers cross-culturally on the internet.